To a Young Actor

EVERY year a number of you happy, hopeful aspirants storm the barricades in Hollywood and on Broadway in a quest for fame and fortune. Some of you are veterans of little theater groups, others are students of acting classes, others will come totally unequipped beyond good looks, energy, and ambition, and still others will arrive with no qualifications beyond the conviction that it is an easy way to make a living.

There is no monitor pattern of advice that can be given to young and eager novices, but after many years spent in meeting and interviewing young actors I have some reflections that may be of value. Probably because I spent time years ago playing bit parts, I like actors as a group and am aware that untried young people face the wide proscenium arch of their future with hope, fanciful dreams, and a healthy lacing of fear.

Many years ago some of us dabbled at a foolish game that went something like this: “ If you could be a millionaire with no taxes, would you give up your left hand?” or If you could spend one month with three famous beauties on a desert island, would you give up a screen credit on a big picture?” You can imagine the limitless absurdities into which we were led. But one proposition never was debated. That was: “If you could be in, direct, or write a smash hit on Broadway, would you be willing to be as bald as a billiard ball for the rest of your life?” No one ever hesitated; the answer always was a loud, hopeful“ Yes.”

This feeling for the theater is a lovely and wondrous thing. It has been celebrated and written about by writers from Shakespeare to Irving Berlin.

There is nothing to match the experience of an opening night on Broadway if the audience and the critics, in response to a performance, applaud and cheer and approve. There is nothing so satisfying as the effect of reading a comedy line and beingrewarded by the resounding roar of a big laugh. There is nothing so complimentary as playing a deep and moving scene and hearing an audience weep as the climax is reached.

Among you new actors straining toward the future is a sizable group who will not remain actors but who will instead become writers, directors, and producers. One reason for this is that actors when hungry are like everybody else — you love to eat — and sometimes under the spur of this need, you will discover talents that will lead you to fame, fortune, and the Colony Restaurant. It is good for everyone in the theater to know something about acting — it makes for better writing, directing, and producing.

One of the temptations that will beset you as you seek your careers is the temptation to conform. Usually we view the concept of conforming as something that will resolve us into stuffy, conservative, and dull nonentities. But there is afoot another type of conformity — specifically, the shuffling, shambling type of acting which is rapidly destroying the diction, the style, the range, and the intelligibility of the American actor. Realism is not only required in much of our theater, but is also desired; yet is it too querulous to ask, “Is there someone in the house who speaks English?” A pair of moccasins is no sure path to stardom, a pair of worn levis is no sign of masculinity, and a sweaty T shirt is no passport to theatrical immortality. Cleanliness is not only next to godliness, it also is a nice thing to view occasionally in the theater. Don’t mistake this: a scrubbed skin (assuring you, as the ads do, solid social security) is no guarantee that you are going to be a successful actor, but the point is that you are not automatically in the Hall of Fame if you look and behave like a slob.

Some of the new recruits, having gone to school and having worked diligently for a period of time, assume that with their diplomas in hand they will not only be radiant with the sunshine of new aspirations but that their diplomas will open wide doors to success. Not so. The diploma is evidence that the actor has spent some time on the practice tee, but he has yet to play the championship course. The tough grind is still to come. You have ahead — you eager people — the final exams one can challenge only in the classroom of practical experience. You have now to begin your rounds. You have to face the frantic calls to casting offices, the readings that bring the color flushing to your head and the “sorry, no’s” that flush the blood back to your vitals, leaving you pale and tired; you have to contend with that lovely bit part that turns into a one-line pronouncement —“ He’s here now!” — or the one that is cut out completely in New Haven. You will contend with the competition, which is sturdy and often ruthless, with the endless searching and reaching, the frustration, and with the heartbreak of happy anticipation followed by dismal disappointment. How many of you will stand up to the attrition and abrasion, I don’t know. Some of you will certainly retire to your uncle’s hardware business; some of you will retreat into the security of marriage and allow your children to dream your dreams in the future; some of you may even turn out to be agents.

But some of you will reach the sunny heights; some of you will experience the ineffable delight of success. Your pictures will appear in TV Guide, or you will be caricatured in the New York Times by Al Hirschfeld. You will be reproduced thirty feet high on the screen of the Radio City Music Hall, and you will wind up with a business manager, an attorney, an agent, a masseur, and a press representative.

Since this happy image of being a star has crossed your mind, it is possible that a big question is now asked: What makes a star? There have been an inordinate number of definitions of the quality that determines stardom. It has been called “it,” “sex appeal.” “personality,” and “magic.”I have no definitions for it. I can, like everybody else, only guess that this star quality is a kind of biological mystery — a strange emotional and electrical current which passes between an actor and an audience. It can come at the most unexpected times. It can happen even in a bad film or a bad play. I mention this in an effort to scotch the argument that “anybody can be great in a great part.” It isn’t necessarily so. Ezio Pinza once described this star quality as a “motor,” a self-generated hum that allows an actor to reach out and touch the audience. They know and understand him. He is merely a good actor when he makes an audience believe him; he is a star when he makes them care about him.

Practically all of show business is built on the foundation of the star system. In varying degrees of interest our audiences continue to be attracted to pictures, plays, theater entertainment, or television shows by the attractiveness of the star — the personality — the entertainer. We also see the star system operating in sports. For example, Orlando Cepeda flashes into stardom on the San Francisco Giants team, and the fans relegate Willie Mays to lesser billing; Ingemar Johansson flashes a right hand and becomes a star, while Floyd Patterson becomes a bit player.

Timing and circumstance play a part in many careers. One year you are piled up on the reefs of rejections and the next year find a safe harbor. In motion pictures the record is quite dramatic. Warners once dropped Van Johnson, and MGM years ago dismissed Fred Astaire. A long, long time ago I was present when Judy Garland auditioned for an executive at 20th Century Fox and was brushed off as too little a girl for such a big voice. MGM grabbed Garland, and at the same time passed up an option on a singer named Deanna Durbin. Darryl Zanuck admitted publicly that he had overlooked Clark Gable, but he must be comforted by knowing that only a few years ago a contemporary of his by the name of Dore Schary overlooked Marilyn Monroe.

So dream your dreams, but continue to work, because while one producer or one director may view your talents with astigmatic vision, another may observe you in resplendent Technicolored twenty-twenty vision.

Most important, remember that show business is a high and incredible lottery, a fantastic dice game, a mammoth roulette wheel. You are all players, and any number can play.

There is much that you can bring to this crowded arena you are about to enter. Kazan once imagined your fantasies, and so did Logan and Kanin and Moss Hart. Anne Bancroft and Marlon Brando once wondered, as you wonder now, if the day would ever come; and Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and William Inge trembled as you tremble at the notion that something you have to say will be heard and will move people and make them think and laugh and cry. I know that many of you will bring replenishment to the theater. From you will come moments in theatrical history. You will design and write, light and costume, direct and perform, and you will bring new images and new forms into being. And one day one of you will undoubtedly be telling others how it all came about.

When you do, say to them - remind them - that the theater is not aloof from the world in which it exists. It must reflect the attitudes and the mores and the urgencies of its time. Those who work in the theater cannot live on a small island of special interest, because that island is not especially immune to the atom or hydrogen bomb. The perplexities of our age perplex the theater. The tensions, harassments, and intransigencies of man sweep into the surf that licks at our island. Tell them, unknown chronicler, twenty-five years hence, to abstain from the shallow participation that lacks vigor and conviction; tell them to eschew the superficial that prates of art but encourages dilettantism; tell them to perspire as they aspire; and tell them that the only corruption they face is from the forces that live within themselves.

Permit me an amplification: you will be told that your careers depend on luck, influence, knowing the right people. All this is so, but these factors avail you nothing if you do not have the talent, will, doggedness, persistency, and downright stubbornness to ride your luck, make opportune use of the influence, and impress the right people that you are the right one for the job.

You may one day — it happens — be that lucky understudy who is called at seven thirty and told to go on for the star. Well, unless you are ready, you are not so lucky.

There is a bright brotherhood in the arts, despite the fact that you will find dissent, insincerity, and hate during your adventures. There is a brotherhood of shared experience and common ambition. It is a fraternal association that makes the rest of the world civilians. Try not to indulge this feeling. Remember that the civilians pass the final judgment and that you are a civilian too - a civilian in a large world in which you must function and live with deep responsibility and awareness. This is the concluding substance of what I wish to say to you: behave as citizens not only of your profession but of the full world in which you live. Be indignant with injustice, be gracious with success, be courageous with failure, be patient with opportunity, and be resolute with faith and honor.